Stripping – No, not like that

Have you ever been working long and hard and get to the point that you should change your clothes and wash up but don’t quite want to because the fresh air and scrubbing feel like they’ll bring on an invasion to the mojo you’ve put together? Sure, it’s childish, but you earned that grit why not just press on?

It’s kind of felt like that over the last month and change. I didn’t quite notice August slip by without blog updates, though I had started the month quite gung-ho about getting this site rolling. I even paid for my own URL and everything. But…stuff happened, like it does and I forgot to get back around to this, no matter that this blog is specifically for documenting such …uh…stuff. But as time kept sliding by without writing anything of substance in public I found myself even more reticent to make the time.

It’s not like I didn’t have anything to report. Hell, I still haven’t posted my final demo or a write up of the experience. I know there’s a pretty good chance there’s a direct link between calling the demo finalized and not writing. Yep, worse than not writing, I’ve let the demo sit around and allowed life and all it entails give me excuses for not getting a move on in the voice over direction. How awful. I won’t get into all the reasons it’s bad. Just leave at how stupidly lazy of me it is. (I write while wrinkling my nose at trying to avoid whining while still demanding the truth of myself.) At any rate, it hasn’t been just laziness.

Mid-to-late August I began my Japanese 203 class. Naturally it’s far more challenging than last spring’s 102 class because both the material and methodology leapt a level in difficulty. But if that weren’t enough, over the summer the college switched textbooks, forcing students and sensei alike to get used to a different approach to studying the language. In that difference of approach is an assumption that we will have studied the material in the beginner level of the new textbook, including kanji and grammatical expressions that in fact we’ve never seen before. It’s a bit of a bear trying to catch up.

Helped my company put on the What the Moon Saw. I’m not directly associated with it, so it’s hardly like I can claim much anxiety from it (I don’t). But it did take up a bit of my time at the beginning of September. I’m proud of the show and I’m proud of my company for having tackled it. The members who did put a lot of work into really brought about some amazing theatre and I’m continually humbled to be in their company.

Talking with company members about their experiences with SITI Company and studying Viewpoints and Suzuki methods of acting led to getting emailed an invitation to train with SITI company members in September when they were in town to perform Trojan Women at the Getty Villa. Imagine being a painter who loves the medium to an unreasonable degree and suddenly you discover a whole new array of colors you might be able to use…if you dare. Exciting feels like too small a word for the thrill digging up such power and energy, even if I did suspect it was there all along. Before I’d only been glimpsing it out of the corner of my eye at Son of Semele, now I actually got to play with it a little bit. Wow. I need more.

Friends have had it tough, here and there. I’ve tried to be there for them, as much as I can when I need all the help I can get. Hey, that’s meant a lot of just hanging out with friends which is hardly like I’ve had it rough. But again, it does take up time. But in a good way.

I’ve been slow about dealing with a community service requirement to get rid of a fine on a traffic ticket. Partly because my only resource is time, and my how it flies, and partly because I’m still pretty miffed about the ticket. (It was a photo thing at a stop light – no one told me I could just ignore those things!) So time will be in even shorter supply when I do start putting in my time. Hooray.

I dropped the only good laptop I had at my disposal, destroying the screen. This actually wasn’t something that ate a lot of time because I have backup machines and an amazing friend, PA, who is a tech-based superhero. So (so far – this was last week) I haven’t been slowed by this, but it did shock me. I know I don’t have a lot of redundancy in my life. If time is my only personal resource, friends and family a my main secondary. And it’s awesome that they’re there, I just wish I could rely on myself a little more. I wish I could be that kind of reliable assistive resources to others. At any rate, it rankles that I can’t solve my own problems.

Any of these deserve an entry, in my mind. Maybe several for SITI – Trojan Women was mindblowing! Who knows if I’ll actually get to it. I’m awfully busy, you see.